mothballs needs no unscrambling at all — the nine-letter word is already the strongest play its own letters allow, banking 16 points in Scrabble as it stands. In all, 291 valid words come out of this rack, grouped by length below and checked for Words With Friends as well as Scrabble.
mothballs is the highest-scoring word from mothballs, worth 16 points in Scrabble. The top 10 of 291 words are shown here, with the full list organized by length below.
Only one nine-letter word uses the letters in mothballs — and it is mothballs itself. No unscrambling is needed: the word is already playable as written, worth 16 points in Scrabble.
Unscrambling mothballs produces exactly one eight-letter word: mothball. It is not one of the common answers — a genuine unscrambler find — and it banks 15 points in Scrabble.
Rearranging the letters in mothballs produces 4 valid seven-letter words. No common everyday answer stands out among these seven-letter results, so let the score decide: the highest-scoring word is mollahs, worth 12 points in Scrabble.
Unscrambling mothballs turns up 20 six-letter words. If a familiar word is all you need, start with almost. For points, the strongest plays are abmhos and abohms — each worth 13 points in Scrabble.
There are 69 five-letter words that can be made by unscrambling the letters in mothballs. If a familiar word is all you need, start with altho, atoms and balls. For points, the strongest plays are abmho and abohm — each worth 12 points in Scrabble.
Rearranging the letters in mothballs produces 113 valid four-letter words. If a familiar word is all you need, start with also, atom and ball. For points, 20 words tie at 9 points, including bath, blah and both.
Unscrambling mothballs turns up 61 three-letter words. If a familiar word is all you need, start with all, ash and bah. For points, 6 words tie at 8 points, including bah, ham and hob.
There are 22 two-letter words that can be made by unscrambling the letters in mothballs. If a familiar word is all you need, start with ah, am and as. For points, the strongest play is hm — worth 7 points in Scrabble.
mothballs is in the NWL, the official Scrabble word list for North America, and in the Words With Friends dictionary, so it's playable exactly as it stands and needs no unscrambling.
The 3-point gap between the two totals comes from the tile values themselves: Scrabble and Words With Friends price the same letters differently.
Dictionaries record two senses for mothballs. Scrabble and Words With Friends score tiles and not meanings, so every sense below is worth the same 16 points on a Scrabble board:
mothballs is the only nine-letter word the same letters produce. No arrangement of the same tiles scores higher in Scrabble, so playing mothballs unchanged also takes the maximum points these letters offer.
The highest-scoring play from these letters is mothballs, worth 16 points in Scrabble, and no other word from mothballs earns more points in Scrabble. Words With Friends prices the same letters differently, so the top of the list changes on a Words With Friends board. Both scores count tile values only and exclude premium squares.
The letters in mothballs produce 291 valid words in the Scrabble and Words With Friends dictionaries. The word count by length is: 1 nine-letter word, 1 eight-letter word, 4 seven-letter words, 20 six-letter words, 69 five-letter words, 113 four-letter words, 61 three-letter words and 22 two-letter words.